Try Finding A Needle In This Hay Stack
While growing up on our farm, we six kids had many chores to do each day. One job was to haul the square bales of hay from the field into the barn. Our barn was built in the 1920s. It was 100 feet long and 70 feet wide. It was made to store loose hay so it had a hay loft with a wooden floor. It also had a small track running the whole length of the barn. Along this track was a trolley with two spears attached to it. One would force the spears into the load of hay. A pair of mules or a tractor would pull the long rope along with the spear and bunches of hay. Then a quick pull of another rope would deposit the hay in any part of the barn. In the early 1950s our neighbor acquired a square baler and we discontinued using the hay loft for loose hay. We stored all of our square bales in that hay loft. We were all too young to carry the bales so we used hay hooks and dragged the bales on the slick floor to the four corners of the barn. Then Dad would take over and stack the bales five to six high.
It was one of these days that I was getting very tired. I very seldom complained but this was one time I actually asked for a break so dad sat me down on a bale and said “now let me tell you something.” My grandfather Jan Kana came here from Czechoslovakia. He was in his early 20s. He and one older brother came to Texas leaving behind their parents and 12 siblings.
Jan Kana loved Texas. He wrote letters regularly and always had the utmost praise for every thing around him. But most he wrote about was how everything was better and bigger in Texas. I’m sure he sent many pictures back to the old country to see just what is going on. I never found out from my dad why they put out such huge hay stacks. I suppose Jan maybe wanted to have the biggest and tallest hay stack in Fayettte County. As far as the other picture, they were hauling the hay from another farm about two miles away and they wanted to make it worth the trip. As far as the oversize load, everything went OK until they came to the Williams Creek bridge. They found out the steel banisters were 10 feet apart and their loose hay was 11 feet wide. But if they moved ever so slowly they would squeeze by. Then came problem #2. Just like the Dubina old bridge, the wooden planks were weather beaten – some had cracks of one inch between the boards. If a person walked slowly over these cracks one would get dizzy. Since the mules had to proceed very slowly, they solved that problem by two persons walking along side each mule and holding their bridle so they could not look down.
Problem #3. After fighting the bridge episode, there arose one more problem: the mules were exhausted and when Dad attempted to turn left off the main road, the wheels of the overloaded wagon hit soft dirt. Even though there was no camel around, “that had to be the straw that broke that camels back!” Luckily it was near home and there was a Fordson tractor nearby. By hooking the tractor to the wagon tongue and adding a little more horse power, the mules and wagon made it OK!